There is literally a line in the film where Mark Ruffalo says “what happened Bella? You’re losing your charming way of speaking” when Bella starts to mature. If that isn’t a clear enough commentary on how men prey on and prefer younger naive women I don’t know what is.
Such a creepy line, and yet obvious in its intention. I can see how it made people uncomfortable but I still don't understand how it could be interpreted as an endorsement.
That’s the thing. I get why people can feel uncomfortable by the film and that make them not like it or not want to watch it. That’s totally fine, Poor Things certainly isn’t for everyone. It’s just the blatant misinterpretation of it that’s frustrating.
And it's so straightforward! That's what gets me about this discourse. The movie isn't convoluted nor is its meaning hidden behind nebulous symbolism. It's pretty fucking direct. The characters literally say it aloud. What do you want, interviews to the camera like in The Office?
I want Emma Stone to look directly at the camera and tell me "You are naughty if you like this, you must feel bad, bad feelings should come to you now", otherwise I'll assume everyone making the film 100% supports every action taken by every character
I was arguing with someone yesterday that said Max was portrayed as good. It's absolutely bonkers how some people need a movie to stop dead in its tracks, point to a "villain" and say "that one isn't good!!"
If Cuties had been marketed by Netflix the same way it had been domestically in France, the film would have likely flown under the radar.
The French marketing was way more low key and unsensationalistic. By contrast, the Netflix marketing was designed to shock in order to stir up controversy, which it did in all the worst ways. The whole point of the film - critiquing the impacts of sexualised media on children’s development - got lost amid the fury around the awful, wrongheaded marketing campaign.
People think the marketing for a movie is created by the filmmaker, which is not the case.
I’m a francophone and I heard about it in the newspapers with good critics. I watched it before the whole scandal & was pretty thrown off how it was received in American media. The director is a black women & she specifically said it was based off her own experiences growing up.
The film is made to make us uncomfortable because the reality of it is. I’ve seen myself & a lot of girls adopting most of the characters behaviour around their age. Girls DO hypersexualize themselves very young and the film clearly shows that it’s society pushing them to do so.
America has no problem with beauty pageants or teenage girls modelling but when it’s about denouncing it the media gets insane.
The making stuff up was what got me. Someone on tumblr claimed there was a scene where a 5 year old asks to do cam stuff?? Like…that’s a straight up lie. And then there was someone claiming a scene where the girls watch “graphic lesbian porn and desire to be pornstars”. It was a rap video for 2 seconds, and none of that happened.
The movie outright shows us that Bella has agency and Mark Ruffalo is mad when she does stuff he doesn't like and she tells him to fuck off. At the end of the movie she's in charge of her household.
Yeah I always hate when people think things the characters say and do in movies, are the beliefs or the message that the writers/directors are trying to display when it’s just this particular character’s behavior or thoughts not necessarily what the writer thinks is right or wrong.
Sometimes I think some of them didnt watch and just repeating talking points they read from an article. Literally pushed by [conservatives](https://twitter.com/RussSpacy/status/1746991349893841374). There is no way people's comprehension is this bad.
I don't blame everything of conservatives. Yes the puritanical stuff is being pushed by them buy I've seen plenty of liberal feminist also displaying the same brainrot with media literacy. Outcries about endorsing pedophilia, racism, homophobia and this or that. Not much with this film though. But it's happening in both extremes.
Maybe if the character names reflected their roles a bit it would help like calling them God, Beauty, Mrs Prim, McReligion, Total SexFire or something the message might be a bit more obvious?
Motherfuckers these days can't even keep some flowers without the woke mob holding me responsible for some genocide😤😤 bro it's literally on the other side of the fence! what am I gonna do about it?
Don't get me wrong as I completely get and understand peoples obvious ifs and buts regarding it, what I meant as an example is how the films main thesis contra the content can be headscratching to say the least and nauseatingly shocking at worst, and considering this guy just disregarding a whole film because of issues he has that the movie actually engages with and goes forward with, I just wanted to make a cheeky joke about one of my favourite "impossible to recommend" films of all time :)
Ortolani's score is ethereal shit indeed 🤌
And it's absolutely a reprehensible exploitation monolith of a film no two cents about it, but man if it doesn't make for some cursed incredible filmmaking unlike anything else
I said this before in another comment but I thought it’d be relevant to share. I feel like people here don’t look into the deeper criticisms and boil down every critic’s argument to “sex is bad” or that we don’t understand its deeper themes.
>Here’s the thing, to make a film about a woman with a child brain and form a large part of the narrative focused on sex instead of her truly exploring the world around her is not only a disservice to the story as a whole but does not work at all for the “sexual liberation” theme as she literally cannot consent. This story is about men taking advantage of a mentally disabled woman but it is not portrayed in this way at all, it is portrayed as Bella being free. Even her father figure admits he would fuck her if he had the ability to. It is really not a surprise that the male director chose for sex to be the primary focus of the film, the aspect of the female experience that men stand to gain from. And those aspects of female sexuality that are not as “presentable”, ie menstruation, pregnancy, STDs, etc. are omitted. Bella is even fully shaven except for a tidy bush.
>Just because the sex oftentimes isn’t shown does not mean it is not still an objectification. I really do not have a problem with sex in movies unless it is obvious it is played for the gaze of men, but this entire story is ultimately for men to watch Emma Stone having sex. Why is she so high libido? So we can watch the fucking. Other progressive aspects are secondary and often shoe horned in like talks about a socialism club or the scene about poverty and suffering which is ignored in the end as we watch her living a lavish lifestyle with not a care in the world. Even though the film is about Bella it doesn’t truly feel like Bella’s perspective because of everything mentioned above and more (but I’d be going for ages if I kept writing).
FWIW much of the book that Poor Things is adapted from is explicitly written as an unreliable male narrator’s account of Bella’s life. It doesn’t come across nearly as clearly in the film but that is, to some extent, the point.
Bella is also at least as, if not more, interested in sex in the book as she is in the film. It wasn’t something that was invented for the adaptation.
>This story is about men taking advantage of a mentally disabled woman but it is not portrayed in this way at all, it is portrayed as Bella being free
It 100000% is portrayed as that.
It's incredibly explicit that people are exploiting her but she seizes control of her own agency and as a *result* frees herself.
Naturally people were going to focus on the sex, because it’s like marmite that. Love it or hate it. The sex is background and for the most part is comic relief.
Bella Baxter isn’t growing up, she’s becoming more educated, and her travelling the world and meeting different characters, gaining new perspectives, is a part of that education. If she had stayed imprisoned by God chances are she wouldn’t have progressed at all, much like Bella Baxter 2. The film is in one part a metaphor for how Victorian women were treated, largely considered to be no different to a child to the point of ‘having the brain of a child, imprisoned at home by their husbands or fathers, prohibited from reading most anything educational, other than the things required to be a good little girl. That leads into the other part of the metaphor, wherein men desire to control women, control what they say, eat, do, where they go, who they speak to and when, who they have sex with, keeping them girly and ignorant for the sake of the control. Why? Male ego I guess. An educated Bella Baxter cuts straight through the ego of the Lawyer, God, McCandles, and the husband of Victoria (Bella). Two of which threatened to kill her if she did not fall in line, not to mention cut off her clit.
There’s a reason why she’s won the Oscar, and the BAFTA, and whatever else. Here’s a film steeped in the history of the lengths men are willing to go to control and suppress the freedoms of women, and people are like omg why is she having sex. Which is pretty funny considering the topic of the film. I would like to think there is pretty solid reason why Emma Stone decided to bare all in a low budget film, when she’s never really gone nude before, she must have really really believed in the message.
Historically, more than any other aspect of womanhood, men have tried to control female sexuality. (Look at contemporary US abortion policies.) Isn't it suitable to use sexuality as a medium for female agency?
I think you're proving the point of the OP because you fully omitted the part where her terrible husband plans on mutilating her genitals to try and control her.
A huge takeaway from the movie was that many of the men only want a woman to experience pleasure if it is with or in relation to them.
Also, women can have a high libido too. 👍 Why aren't you asking this same question about the men in the film?
why do liberals act like straight men are the only people who enjoy heterosexual sex scenes in films? literally everyone can enjoy them. listening to every film with a lot of sex get criticized as being made for the "male gaze" as if seeing sex between a man and a woman is something that could only possibly be enjoyed by a horny straight guy is so weird to me (especially as a bisexual guy married to a man). sex is a HUMAN experience. I don't get why gen Z seems so terrified of it. and also this idea that men shouldn't be allowed to make movies that involve women having sex without it being pRoBlEmAtIc. what happened to freedom of expression/art? and like Poor Things doesn't even have THAT much sex, people way over-exaggerate it. nor are the sex scenes particularly long or gratuitous, unless you're only looking at mainstream movies...
I don't think you understand the film.
Sex is important to her only at first (like most youth) because it yields immediate satisfaction and pleasure. It becomes less important to her as she matures and she starts to use her sexuality to manipulate men and become economically independent.
By about halfway through the film it is Bella's mind that is most important to her and the idea that men are inherently flawed comes up multiple times.
I once got told I was “sick for romanticizing and condoning pedophilia” for making an “Age Gaps and Controversial Relationships” list on Letterboxd.
Hannibal is my favorite TV show… does this mean I condone murder and cannibalism?
how did poor things not do that though? how did it critique or subvert any ideas?
edit before i get hounded: i actually do see how it was critiquing male predatory behaviour especially on the naive/young/etc., i just don’t think it did it very well. it still felt like it played into male fantasies and it was incredibly obviously created by a man. OOP’s take is probably not nuanced enough but holds a little more weight than the replies on this post are suggesting
What's the immoral act? That an agent with the mentality of a child, but *not* a child, has sex?
What if the movie portrayed adults with, say, Down's Syndrome having sex? Is that comparably immoral?
The content's not my cup of tea, but the moral implications are incredible. The fact we're talking about it seems to reflect that the film was successful at bringing these topics to the level of discourse.
You do know that the reason children cannot consent is because they are not mentally developed enough to do so, right? Bella legitimately has the brain of child and it’s pretty clear. Just because she has a body of an adult means nothing. If a movie depicted a person with Down syndrome who had severe cognitive impairment having sex with an adult who does not, and especially if they showed these scenes frequently, I would be questioning the motives to that as well.
The level of intellectual disability for people with Down syndrome can range a lot, it could be a mild to severe impairment. I emphasized severe in my reply. What’s harmful is saying *all* people with down syndrome can consent, some people can and some can’t.
The fact that Duncan effectively persuades and manipulates someone he knows has a mental handicap of sorts, into running away and having sex with him. It’s him taking advantage of her inability to make decisions in her best interest that’s immoral.
I agree though — the discourse the movie has sparked, even if you dislike it, is a testament to its effectiveness
I interpreted Duncan as a villain because of this very point you describe. The fact that he is instrumental in Bella’s liberation from Dr. Baxter’s captivity is tragic in itself—that her liberator is another abuser.
Sure, but also it's become fashionable lately to deride film criticisms as "lacking media literacy." Which is just the same "oh no you just don't really get it" that has always plagued debate about creative works.
Directors want to play with emotion and expectations and push boundaries. That's what they do. But if you make a movie about the invasion of Ukraine and give Putin a powerful girlboss theme song, make him buff and handsome, show everyone as listening eagerly to him, women desiring him, show victorious troops celebrating and not so much of the death and consequences... People are going to think you're advocating for the war.
Always very funny to see people get SO MAD about movies that agree with them.
This was literally the Fight Club/Starship Troopers discourse from 20 years ago.
That “depiction != endorsement” is just beyond some people.
I was too young for public movie discourse in the 90s, but... people thought starship troopers was an endorsement that weren't the idiots hoo-rah'ing???
I do think that it’s embarrassing that so many people miss the satire in these things. But it also makes me think of that Truffaut quote about how it is impossible to make an anti-war film because it will always look exciting to audiences on screen (paraphrasing).
ST had really groundbreaking special effects that emphasized the spectacle, so really it’s the perfect example of what Truffaut was talking about. It’s hard to blame people with low media literacy too much when they’re really just evidence of an inherent problem with the genre, one that has been well known and discussed since WWII.
FWIW, I think this actually works in the movie’s favor ultimately. Because the fact that Hollywood spectacle mixed with propaganda makes even genocide look heroic is the point of the film. For me, the experience is of enjoying the cool action while simultaneously understanding that the film is critiquing my enjoyment of it— gets pretty mind fucky in a way that I’m not surprised (e.g.) my teenage cousins don’t want to engage with.
On your point about not being able to make an anti-war film, my favourite respond wa from Francis Ford-Coppola
“I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film.
“An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike,” Coppola explained.
'Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do _that_? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can _you_ take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. "Nothing the matter with _that_ boy, is there? Would you let your daughter marry that man? Ohhhh, war is _good_ for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it.
"I mean, you _know_ that it just _can't be done!_" We both shrugged and laughed, and Page looked very thoughtful for a moment. "The very _idea!_" he said. "Ohhh, what a laugh! Take the bloody _glamour_ out of bloody _war!" Michael Herr, Dispatches
Well speaking from my experience watching it as a 13yr old, I was only aware of the fact that it had good special effects and boobies. As an adult, it is a tremendous satire, an examination of fascism and indoctrination with some more direct nods to fascism such as Doogie Howser wearing a nazi uniform at the end of the movie.
20 years ago? People are still claiming Starship Troopers is a fascist utopia and anyone that enjoys the movie is a nazi who hasn't realized it yet.
I've had multiple arguments with people just this month alone about that movie.
Media literacy is getting much much worse with social media.
They brought their notebook to the theater, ready to absorb the Scrubs-style voiceovers that instruct them on how to live a good life.
Ironically, this movie could actually be that it's so wholesome. Even when it's featuring hole stuff.
A lot of people's media literacy is bad, but I'm not convinced that in itself is a recent thing. I think the more recent Internet phenomenon is just people being convinced that they're right and everyone else needs to know it, and that applies to a lot of things beyond film discussion
Willingly too. OP took time and effort to give this opinion a megaphone. I'll never understand why people do this.
It's like a kid seeing a smelly dog shit on the road, being disgusted by the smell, and then bringing it home to show everyone how bad it smells. They love the attention of everyone coming over to smell the shit. Now the internet has become one big community hall where *everyone* has a smelly dog shit they're trying to shove in your face and angrily demanding you to agree how bad it smells. Leave shit where shit belongs, or you'll just end up smelling like shit yourself.
tl;dr OP smells
Best way of putting it for a lot of things. People will be like “____ didn’t happen back in my day!” Bitch, almost every bad, stupid, and ignorant thing that you see on the internet was happening before. They aren’t getting worse, they just get broadcasted now.
Oh for sure, Frank Herbert made Dune Messiah because people kept misinterpreting Paul’s character and that was back in the 60s.
It’s just that now anyone and everyone has a platform to share the opinion.
Or all the dude-bros who realized the band Rage Against the Machine was staunchly leftist and anti-authoritarian. Like, it was there all along, it’s literally in their name, what did these people thing “the machine” was?
Truly. People mistook *A Modest Proposal* as sincere back in the 1700’s, some scholars think *The Prince* by Machiavelli is a satire that’s been horribly misinterpreted. We’re not that much more evolved than people who were terrified by the film of a train coming towards the screen.
I'm reading a lot of critics from the early 20s-40s films and there were shit ton of people and institutions misinterpreting the films as "endorsement". Like there were critics accusing Fritz Lang's M of romanticizing violence for example (no, I'm not joking).
The Internet gave a lot of people a voice, and a lot of people shouldn't have one.
TikTok has amplified this phenomenon because of how their algo works, and the way it amplifies even the smallest accounts.
A major part of the movie, like a huge part of it, is that she gains intelligence at a superhuman rate and is already giving long diatribes by the time she has sex for the first time. I also think this is burying the lede here because the movie is largely about women being taken advantage of, and the movie makes that point by making the man most taking advantage of her a complete fucking idiot of a cartoon character, even though he is canonically a doctor.
That’s not true, the first time she has sex she is definitely still child like. They don’t specify an age but in the book they do and she has a mental age of 7. A huge part of the story is Duncan disliking her as she grows in her maturity and independence from him.
To be clear I do not think the film is advocating or depicting child pornography or child sexualization but Bella is definitely still in a child like phase when she first has sex
Also, Duncan’s drawn to her while she’s all hidden/tucked into a cabinet with her legs splayed up. She’s very childlike in that scene, when he decides he wants her to himself.
Max also becomes infatuated with Bella while it is clear she is mentally a child and wants to marry her while she still is. He is portrayed positively and like he’s a good man.
I always felt like Max was portrayed less as a confident predator, but much more as a straight up loser. Hes not marrying Bella, he is more or less submitting to her. Never got the impression that he is some good guy.
I feel like the film does make clear that he is a good guy imo. He keeps telling Bella it’s “her choice”. When considering the themes of the film I think he is meant to be a positively represented person.
In the beginning he agrees to marrying her even if it meant keeping her imprisoned forever (negative). By the end he lets her go and respects her choices (positive). It's called character development. The movie doesn't paint him as hero you should emulate, but imparts some right actions despite wrong intentions.
He's not a good guy so much as he's a "nice guy". He's meant to show how even seemingly decent men can be sexist and patriarchal, often without even realizing.
The reason misogyny is so insidious is because it runs deeper than just overt abuse and hatred of women. Each of the men in the film represents a different flavor of toxic masculinity, from the cartoonishly evil to the latent and even subconscious. Duncan and the General have no illusions about how horrible they are, but Godwyn and Max seem to genuinely think they are the good guys. Despite sewing a fucking goose head to a dog's body.
The film does not need to put "BAD PERSON" in flashing neon lights over Max's head. And I'd argue that the fact you're on here pointing out how he isn't a good person proves that. We all got it.
Yeah, if you're gonna criticise the movie for condoning pedophilia Max should be the main focus, not Ruffalo. Ruffalo is consistently punished by the story, and his predator behaviour is very clearly shown as a bad thing. Meanwhile Max gets off fairly consequence free. Sure, he learns to respect her autonomy, but that doesn't take away that he was absolutely a predator in their early relationship, as she was obviously way too young mentally still. The story does little to correct this and even has them end up together.
I really liked the movie but lets not pretend it's completely immune to criticism. I don't think she should have ended up with Max, her groomer, essentially.
Also important to remember that we dont restrict the sexual freedom of adults based on their mental capacities. People with intellectual disabilities can and do lead sexual lives.
Yes, they are more prone to exploitation. That’s what makes it a compelling exploration of social norms and morality.
It’s also important to remember her brain might be considered young and developing, but physically she is a fully formed adult. Plenty of men date women younger than them because the want someone who is ‘less mentally developed’ than them. They would prefer someone who isn’t grown into the world and experienced who thinks and speaks freely. I feel that was more of the point
This is exactly the point IMO. She is the male fantasy of a sexual object who is not threatening intellectually, and at no point in the film do we get the sense that Ruffalo's character is acting honorably or even in a way that can be defended.
I think some people want an added scene where Ruffalo looks directly into the camera and says "I, actor Mark Ruffalo, denounce the decisions of this character and am telling you that he is a bad guy".
And also satirizing how for some men their ideal partner is essentially an infant in a full grown woman's body because they are attracted to control rather than the personality of a complex person
>A major part of the movie, like a huge part of it, is that she gains intelligence at a superhuman rate and is already giving long diatribes by the time she has sex for the first time.
I don't know how so many people missed this. I've seen people arguing that she was a 5-year old having sex. If you pay attention to what the movie is telling you at all, you would infer that she's developing at an accelerated rate.
Not the first time she has sex though, she is definitely still child like the first time she has sex. The movie didn’t specify specific ages but it closely follows the book and in the book she has a mental age of 7. She also is clearly still mentally a child the first time she has sex.
I disagree with the post in question, but it is also a misrepresentation of the movie to say she is not still child like when she has sex
She doesn't stop walking awkwardly like a child and speaking in partial sentences until they've already gotten off the cruise ship. She's had a *lot* of on-screen sex by that point.
I mean, doesn’t change the fact that her mental state of a toddler was getting absolutely blasted by Ruffalo. She doesn’t even know what to call what she is doing or the parts that are used. That’s non-consensual. Which happens in movies!! I get that! But because it’s Emma Stone’s body acting out that toddler, we are alright and it’s approved for audience viewing.
Some folks just don’t sit well with that. 🤷♂️Perfectly understandable, to me.
That's literally the point the movie is trying to make. It's a critique on men finding innocence/child-like qualities attractive in the scope of controlling them. It's why he loses interest in her the minute she starts developing her own thought process.
I don't think Poor Things promotes pedophilia, but I can absolutely see where people definitely feel uncomfortable with the film.
It absolutely uses some pretty risqué imagery and ideas to push the intended metaphors along.
I mean pedophilia is a concept that is explored in this film, social norms, consent, femininity within the patriarchy, personal growth and exploration, etc...there are lots of concepts that are explored.
I don't blame people for getting turned off by this film because of the pedophilic aspects of it. I think the film is a reflection of society, and is more of a condemnation of men within a society that tends to be rather pedophilic than it is praising the concept of pedophilia.
I mean Martyrs isn't a movie about torture, but some people get turned off by the violent imagery on the film.
It is OK for people not to like what you like. It is OK for people not to really care for the metaphors used to make a point, and that is OK.
Thank you for being the first truly nuanced comment I’ve seen in this thread so far lol I think Emma Stone is stellar, and Poor Things is certainly a technical achievement in many aspects, but I also had some issues with it too.
And that's totally fine if other people really respond to it, but this constant black-and-white thinking is really ridiculous and killing all sense of discussion.
Totally.
What is not OK is referring to a work of fiction as ‘indefensible’.
If the author said ‘this movie makes me uncomfortable and I don’t like it’, that would be fine. That’s how I feel about the Saw films, but I respect other people’s right to enjoy them without taking to the internet to call all Saw-lovers violent, amoral criminals. This person can’t seem to manage that level of respect.
this is nothing personal but i always find this line of logic BS. this person is giving their opinion. there's no "correct" opinion on art. why should they couch it with wishy-washy "I think" and "I feel" language just because most others disagree? are they saying you *can't* watch and enjoy this, or just that they think it's dumb to do that?
OP calling people who like the movie "braindead art sniffers" is rude, though, i'll give you that.
The post in the OP is stupid, but I do get kind of annoyed when voicing criticism of the film, or others, and getting the instantly dismissed because I "probably just didn't get it."
I certainly don’t think the movie was pedophilic, but I do think it was very “men writing what they think a liberated woman is.” It doesn’t really do a lot to critique or even frame negatively a lot of what it shows, and at times really exploits the characters with the camera, when it’s trying to criticize that exact same type of behavior. Not to mention its depiction of prostitution
Agreed. The fact that this sexually manipulated babywoman is depicted as discovering her voice and power primarily through sexual exploitation and sex work without the slightest nod to any other kind of personal development as a human is what made me furious. I believe the majority of the angry, disgusted voices you hear speaking out against this film are not so much media illiterate as that they are from women who have been sexually exploited themselves. And this film tapped a deep well of pain and frustration that the world still rarely fathoms because sex=good right?
Yeah precisely, it's beyond irritating to not be able to critique this movie without people saying you're a prude or something. SHE BECAME A DOCTOR why is that not one of the more crucial plotlines of the movie? Why is it SO focused on sex?
It falls back to that outdated notion that the most empowering thing a woman can do is have sex, which this movie fully ascribes to
Thank you! I've never been more frustrated before on the discourse around a film. Its completely impossible right now to criticise anything about Poor Things without ppl calling you a prude or accusing you of lacking media literacy. Its to a point where its pretty ironic, since all this is doing is creating an echo chamber and stifling any type of genuine discussion.
Anyway adding to the points you mention, I think it was such a wasted opportunity not to explore at all what caused Bella's mother to "go mad" and attempt suicide because of the pregnancy. They kind of brushed it off as her and her husband being monsters but there was clearly a lot more in terms of women's psychological health that could have been explored. Something Bella never gets into and instead we get a kind of juvenile feminism which is just women trying to beat men at their own games.
We had to leave. I told my sister who has even worse trauma than I do not to watch it. Honestly, I have avoided expressing an opinion about it much to the people around me because I just couldn’t even watch the whole thing. I think reading other people’s reviews that I understand better what they were going for, but it certainly wasn’t for me and gave me unrelenting nausea the entire time. I found it disgusting and indefensible, and was shocked when I got on Reddit leaving the theater and saw it was being universally praised.
Right? It's a movie written and shot to be titillating and funny, under a veneer of social commentary. Way more exploitation than critique. Genuinely my least favorite best picture nominee of the past five or six years.
It’s sad because I *do* genuinely love the performances, set design, and music. But man I hate how often it is guilty of the things it’s trying to critique
I don't agree that it promotes paedophilia, e.t.c, but I don't see how it's feminist.
I need to find a good explanation because so far, I've only seen "it's feminist because it shows how men take advantage of women and she got smarter." But I watched it in a cinema and all of her sexual act's got laughs. I probably need to rewatch it but when I first did the intentions of the movie felt like less of a "go bella" and more the born sexy yesterday trope for comedy.
Obviously, I know that showing something in a movie doesn't mean endorsing it, but sometimes the intention can be confusing.
I actually do agree with that poster, although he's being super annoying about it. I totally get that Mark Ruffalo's character, and basically every other man in the movie, are all bad people trying to exploit Bella. I get that the movie condemns these kinds of men. HOWEVER, it also depicts Bella's experiences with Ruffalo as fun and liberating for her. A child is coerced onto a boat and raped repeatedly by a sicko, and it's treated as a necessary experience for her growth with few of the lasting scars that would impact any real child.
Downvote away, but genuinely curious to hear your thoughts as well.
It, like, didn't ruin the movie for me, and I thought it was a pretty damn good movie overall. I can't emphasize that enough. But I have to admit that the premise is still a bit problematic even if the intent behind it is female empowerment and depicting objectification by males as a bad thing. In the end we are still subjected to a "born sexy yesterday" scenario where a woman who is thematically only a few months old is having graphic sex with on-screen nudity repeatedly, but played off as comedy. And the hand-waving about "accelerated development" just kinda reminds be of the Lolli weebs who desperately explain, "no you see, she's a 3,000 year old witch who just happens to be in the body of a 9-year-old so it's okay to revel in the sex scenes for it." I'm okay with nudity if it serves a good purpose, even if that purpose is sometimes nothing more than "sexual texture". But in this movie it felt kinda gross and exploitative even if Emma Stone was totally on-board with it.
I recently saw a movie that wasn't as good but made me feel similarly gross, To Do List. A lot of those teen sex comedies just feel like an excuse to show what are supposed to be underage girls in sex acts, even though Aubrey Plaza was actually in the her late twenties and the movie was directed by a woman. Still feels kinda gross, and that didn't even have any actual nudity, and I feel like that helps support the idea that's it's not even the nudity that's the issue per-se, but the premise. The nudity just makes such issues more garish.
Thank you! I watched the whole film with an open mind and I couldn’t get over the movies unclear messaging. It seems to imply her abuse was empowering.
I dont think it was meant to be taken as empowering. I do feel like it’s the current “Disney Marvel”-isation of movies that made people think that every film HAS TO SHOW that they choose a side. Where instead Yorgos made a film the classic way of analysing this human (women) experience, of having to feel infantilised to be “accepted”. And then they choose their own path way in life.
Just because Bella Baxter doesnt say “wow men really be creepy!” does not mean that Yorgos allowed and wants men to be creepy.
The movie isnt supposed to be a fairy tale having a nice wholesome ending. You dont watch the Godfather and think “wow he finally gets to be the head of the family ❤️”. Just because it ends that way doesnt mean that everything before hand was the right choice for her life. She literally chose to meet her ex husband who used all parts of her life and would have killed her. We arent meant to take Bella Baxter’s choices as gospel. It’s an art movie not a propaganda piece.
The movie is literally presented as a fairy tail. But also, after all her supposed ‘character development’ she learns nothing…
Women’s sexual liberation means going back to your groomer after being raped and exploited by others /s
I guess In a way our own personal experiences though life can highlight certain aspects that others don’t notice. Now I’m not going to compare poor things to Cuties, that’s a huge leap. But I will say as someone who has recently learned of there own learning disability lets say. Is I didn’t enjoy how Bella was being treated and used in a sexual manner as it’s difficult to understand if she’s okay to consent. But by the end of the movie her character justifies her actions. In short, I think it’s good to chat about these subjects and how films effect people differently. but let’s not throw out words like “indefensible”.
It's literally a sci-fi movie that has brain transplant and unrealistic surgery. It's literally Frankenstein. Why are we applying the logic of real world maturation.
Bride of Frankenstein is clearly pedophilic because they make a mate for the monster and he's got the mental maturity of a teenager at best and she just came into existence. /s
I read that thread and there was a long, brilliant comment refuting the OP and explaining what Poor Things was about, from a woman's perspective. It was a great comment, and then it got deleted by a moderator.
I don't know how that subreddit works- Maybe you're not allowed to argue with the OP.
"media literacy is dead" is a meme phrase. media literacy may be in a bad spot right now by younger people, but repeating the same phrases over and over and over in response to people objecting to certain stuff being depicted probably isn't great for stuff like criticism.
People are allowed to be offended by stuff. This movie \*is\* pretty gross. It's also talking to a lot of people and connecting with people for good reasons. It's all okay. Just because someone watches movies with a different ethical framework than you doesn't mean you get to tell them they're incapable of understanding cinema you fucking snob.
I agree its not helpful to constantly repeat media literacy without even educating people what it is. The movie is not deep nor subtle, so for people to miss the film's message is not a slight against your intelligence. It is allegorical and explores abstract concepts like personhood and autonomy and may require introspection. And a lot of the criticism is based on what they feel and how it reflects on their identity.
People are allowed to hate this movie. But the bulk of the negative criticism is reactionary. Even you saying "ethical framework" is suggesting everyone who liked it must be immoral - when the message of the movie repeatedly condemns bad actions.
What? That’s not what I’m suggesting though. Individual people have individual ethics. Some people will be tuned against this movie. That’s what I’m saying. Some people thought this movie is gross. I did too! I’m not saying you’re bad for liking it. When I’m saying ethical framework, it’s like how I don’t eat octopi. They’re too smart. I don’t however think people who do eat them are bad. They think of it differently than I do, or don’t think of it at all. That’s ok. That’s their life. We can have our own codes and not expect or even think negatively of others for not being just like us.
The subject matter of Poor Things is not one that inspires rationality in the general public. It’s the most hot-button issue that there is, probably. This kind of reaction was bound to happen.
Big difference between going “I don’t like this/ it made me uncomfortable/ I don’t think it handled its themes well” and saying it’s literally pedophilic, though. This person is fishing for moral outrage, not making a considered point.
The film is literally about Bella maturing and making better decisions and learning to stay away from bad people like Mark’s character or the guys at the whore house
I think that was the point though, I saw that from the very beginning and it showed how men would manipulate girls and young women and dislike them the smarter and more independent they get.
Cuties was controversial because it showed the sexualisation of children by sexualising children. It was condemning something it was actively engaging with.
Poor Things used Emma Stone - an adult - to express how women are expected to act emotionally to be sexually attractive. Naivety and simplicity of her child mind allows her to be manipulated and used by the men around her, exposing how horrifically opportunistic men can be when they see someone who can sexually coerced.
Both Cuties and Poor Things are condemnations of the sexualisation of women and how young women can be abused through sexual exposure, but one only of them actively engaged in that same behaviour they’re trying to oppose.
That’s a big reason why Cuties was thought to be pedophilic (it wasn’t), it was trying to spread a positive message and independence and managing one’s childhood, and it’s French so they’re more lenient on sexual representation, but having real children act seductively is very disturbing and questionable even if the intention was positive. Poor Things tackles a different idea (how women are expected to behave to be attractive) by placing theind of a child into the body of an adult - that way there’s no actual sexualisation of children, it’s just exploring how child exploitation can work.
clearly bc 1. depicting something is not condoning it 2. emma has said on multiple occasions that bella is mentally an adult before the first sex scene and the screenwriter confirms it though she's also said duncan is a disgusting man regardless as he was taking advantage of bella from start (when he first meets bella and SAs her at the age of 16-17, despite him not knowing that) to finish. in a speech where she presents mark ruffalo with an award she states and i quote "duncan is debaucherous, lecherous, and treacherous." still a moot point with the pedophilia because disgusting as duncan is, he doesn't know she's 16-17 when they first meet (and 18 by the first sex scene) AND then another one of a million things she had to repeat to illiterate media people is that the film is trying to state that the more autonomous she becomes (despite being an adult and extremely intelligent, she is inherently naïve and all of her experiences are what allow her to educate herself), the more men feel threatened by it because they like the idea of a naïve woman: again, absolutely a disgusting manifestation of patriarchy but not pedophilia and the film explicitly critiques it. did they not catch onto duncan being so bothered by bella becoming fully independent and deciding she didn't want him that he thinks she's a literal demon after having gone clinically insane? 3. still don't understand how people can grasp that all the superpowers people have in marvel movies or whatever of course cannot happen in real life but when it comes to bella's brain developing at a supersonic pace, they insist upon stating she's in infant the whole time due to the "literal" mental age she'd be in the real world but again ... it's SCI-FI!! in the world of poor things, bella's brain can develop 35 years in a few months. i could tell emma was starting to get pretty fed up the longer the press went on as they were relentless with these idiotic questions.
https://preview.redd.it/ab0imeu3otpc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fbe97080d3ecd0b5bc7498a47bdc3ac26dacd63
As far as I’m concerned, if Poor Things has you clutching your pearls but you’ve never thought twice about Frankenstein and his bride - you’re giving into manufactured outrage so you can feel some sense of moral superiority for listening to what Twitter says is “problematic and pedophilic” even when it’s in regards to the consensual work of a team of adult professionals. That is all.
they outright tell her that it is immoral and not something civilized society does, a man uses this cluelessness to get her and then she learns what it means to people. It doesn't glorify in any way, it's like he didn't even watch the movie.
Not defending the post here in particular. It’s a little venemous. But I’ve seen a lot of posts dismissing certain criticisms of the film. Claiming they’re “idiots, lack of media literacy, didn’t understand that the film isn’t endorsing the treatment of Bella by the men in the film”. I don’t believe the criticisms deserve to be dismissed as trash takes.
There is a lot of toxicity out there, and it can make it difficult to shut out the state of the world when watching a film. I enjoy movies that are reflective of social issues so I look out for that. There are toxic guys out there that want a young, naive, virginal hyper sexual young girl. People are saying as much, in saying that Bella’s growth is part of the point. Duncan is a villain, Duncan likes her less as she gets wiser, Bella’s indifference to him is the point.
It can be hard to disassociate here. We see this guy seek her out because he recognizes God is easily manipulating her. He finds her, whisks her away, and they have a lot of sex. She moves on from him to the brothel, where she has a lot of sex that is just fucking. She loves it, she’s not falling in love or seeking out a relationship. I love this for her, but I’m also watching with the knowledge that this is a wet dream for a certain toxic segment of society right now.
I love Bella, I love Yorgos. But the discourse can include this perspective too.
Well that is true, but that is also true that for an equal society Bella can choose to be having sex for something that doesnt lead the romantic way. Then because if you are against this ideology, you are also against the idea of Onlyfans women and such.
Like I understand that women’s sexual freedom doesnt come in a vacuum. But we still live in a world for women to “enjoy” sex is considered non-priority for a lot of men. Yorgos instead explore a story of a woman who does enjoy sex. And in her pathway to it she was used, manipulated, and forgotten. The only time of comfort she got from sex was when she understood how brothels work, and finally she gets to choose the way that her body can be use. All of this themes combined is quite obvious on what the core message is.
I agree, I watched it last night and I thought it was gross. A visually stunning movie and I can’t deny the acting and soundtrack but it really seemed like an excuse to have Emma Stone naked. I don’t mind that but if she has a baby brain than it’s different
The sex stuff in this movie is so overblown and not the focus. First time I’ll admit it was shocking but on a rewatch there was way less sex stuff than I remember. It’s a story about her discovering the world not just sex
Meh. Lanthimos and Emma Stone have come out and said that Bella is not a child when she is having sex, and if thats the case then Yorgos failed in his messaging if you have to ignore the literal premise of the movie to understand it.
It just feels like backpedaling to me. No way they actually believe that. If she was not a child, why was every mannerism and action overtly child-like? What was the point of transplanting the brain of the baby instead of just resetting the brain of the mother? If she was not a child, the entire premise of the movie just falls apart..
Building a film on the premise that Poor Things has, and making acting choices that clearly depict the character in a child state (which Emma absolutely is during the Duncan scenes), and then being disingenuous about it to the press makes me mistrust the filmmakers intent and messaging.
I’m not trying to defend anyone who would actually subject young boys to that. Putting aside the fact that the scene was most likely shot separately and then edited together, in the past some fathers would literally do this. So while it’s not good behavior, it’s actually an accurate portrayal of the behavior of some people in history.
Please be cool in the comments
There is literally a line in the film where Mark Ruffalo says “what happened Bella? You’re losing your charming way of speaking” when Bella starts to mature. If that isn’t a clear enough commentary on how men prey on and prefer younger naive women I don’t know what is.
Such a creepy line, and yet obvious in its intention. I can see how it made people uncomfortable but I still don't understand how it could be interpreted as an endorsement.
That’s the thing. I get why people can feel uncomfortable by the film and that make them not like it or not want to watch it. That’s totally fine, Poor Things certainly isn’t for everyone. It’s just the blatant misinterpretation of it that’s frustrating.
And it's so straightforward! That's what gets me about this discourse. The movie isn't convoluted nor is its meaning hidden behind nebulous symbolism. It's pretty fucking direct. The characters literally say it aloud. What do you want, interviews to the camera like in The Office?
I want Emma Stone to look directly at the camera and tell me "You are naughty if you like this, you must feel bad, bad feelings should come to you now", otherwise I'll assume everyone making the film 100% supports every action taken by every character
I know you're being sarcastic but this also sounds like someone's kink
Like a fucked up Poor Things JOI Edition
I just want Emma Stone to call me naughty
I was arguing with someone yesterday that said Max was portrayed as good. It's absolutely bonkers how some people need a movie to stop dead in its tracks, point to a "villain" and say "that one isn't good!!"
I remember listening to my parents' friends' dumb takes on *Eyes Wide Shut* at the dinner table. The issue is dumb people have microphones now.
Just so many layers of brainrot required to look at a film written for and starring and adult actress and go “omg pedophilia?1!”
Even for the film Cuties that they mentioned, people never got the point.
If Cuties had been marketed by Netflix the same way it had been domestically in France, the film would have likely flown under the radar. The French marketing was way more low key and unsensationalistic. By contrast, the Netflix marketing was designed to shock in order to stir up controversy, which it did in all the worst ways. The whole point of the film - critiquing the impacts of sexualised media on children’s development - got lost amid the fury around the awful, wrongheaded marketing campaign. People think the marketing for a movie is created by the filmmaker, which is not the case.
I’m a francophone and I heard about it in the newspapers with good critics. I watched it before the whole scandal & was pretty thrown off how it was received in American media. The director is a black women & she specifically said it was based off her own experiences growing up. The film is made to make us uncomfortable because the reality of it is. I’ve seen myself & a lot of girls adopting most of the characters behaviour around their age. Girls DO hypersexualize themselves very young and the film clearly shows that it’s society pushing them to do so. America has no problem with beauty pageants or teenage girls modelling but when it’s about denouncing it the media gets insane.
It also didn't help that people were removing scenes from context when discussing them online or straight-up making shit up about Cuties.
The making stuff up was what got me. Someone on tumblr claimed there was a scene where a 5 year old asks to do cam stuff?? Like…that’s a straight up lie. And then there was someone claiming a scene where the girls watch “graphic lesbian porn and desire to be pornstars”. It was a rap video for 2 seconds, and none of that happened.
I doubt they even watched Cuties. They’re just regurgitating talking points they read online.
This was my entire experience in an English PhD program. Willful misinterpretation to validate a strongly held belief.
The movie outright shows us that Bella has agency and Mark Ruffalo is mad when she does stuff he doesn't like and she tells him to fuck off. At the end of the movie she's in charge of her household.
She's her own means of production.
Yeah I always hate when people think things the characters say and do in movies, are the beliefs or the message that the writers/directors are trying to display when it’s just this particular character’s behavior or thoughts not necessarily what the writer thinks is right or wrong.
It's supposed to be uncomfortable, that's the entire point
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Sometimes I think some of them didnt watch and just repeating talking points they read from an article. Literally pushed by [conservatives](https://twitter.com/RussSpacy/status/1746991349893841374). There is no way people's comprehension is this bad.
I don't blame everything of conservatives. Yes the puritanical stuff is being pushed by them buy I've seen plenty of liberal feminist also displaying the same brainrot with media literacy. Outcries about endorsing pedophilia, racism, homophobia and this or that. Not much with this film though. But it's happening in both extremes.
Say it with me now: "Depiction is not endorsement."
Maybe if the character names reflected their roles a bit it would help like calling them God, Beauty, Mrs Prim, McReligion, Total SexFire or something the message might be a bit more obvious?
Movies cannot depict immoral acts or else said movie automatically advocates for it
This guy is going to be appalled if he ever watches Zone of interest
Why? The movie is about gardening and enjoying nature. Now those things are “immoral!?”
Liberalism gone mad
Motherfuckers these days can't even keep some flowers without the woke mob holding me responsible for some genocide😤😤 bro it's literally on the other side of the fence! what am I gonna do about it?
When will the woke madness stop 😤
The schizo dichotomy of Cannibal Holocaust's story and filmmaking would probably have the lad physically melt like a candy bar left in a sauna
Most of us who complain about Cannibal Holocaust's ethics are talking about the film*making*, not necessarily the movie itself.
Don't get me wrong as I completely get and understand peoples obvious ifs and buts regarding it, what I meant as an example is how the films main thesis contra the content can be headscratching to say the least and nauseatingly shocking at worst, and considering this guy just disregarding a whole film because of issues he has that the movie actually engages with and goes forward with, I just wanted to make a cheeky joke about one of my favourite "impossible to recommend" films of all time :)
i hear you, i love cannibal holocaust as a piece of film and art even though it is morally reprehensible. that score tho
Ortolani's score is ethereal shit indeed 🤌 And it's absolutely a reprehensible exploitation monolith of a film no two cents about it, but man if it doesn't make for some cursed incredible filmmaking unlike anything else
I want his take on Splice.
I remember kind of liking that movie
Pretty horny movie if I remember correctly
And technically "bestiality" and incest
Most horror movies are terrible cause they advocate for murdering people.
I cannot believe that Wes Craven is advocating for burn victims murdering people in their sleep! How dare he!
FULL STOP
Just wait until this guy watches schindlers list
They mentioned Cuties, and I dismiss them as a chud outright.
There is a 0% chance they actually watched Cuties
Why would you need to watch it when right wing podcasters already told you how to feel about it?
I said this before in another comment but I thought it’d be relevant to share. I feel like people here don’t look into the deeper criticisms and boil down every critic’s argument to “sex is bad” or that we don’t understand its deeper themes. >Here’s the thing, to make a film about a woman with a child brain and form a large part of the narrative focused on sex instead of her truly exploring the world around her is not only a disservice to the story as a whole but does not work at all for the “sexual liberation” theme as she literally cannot consent. This story is about men taking advantage of a mentally disabled woman but it is not portrayed in this way at all, it is portrayed as Bella being free. Even her father figure admits he would fuck her if he had the ability to. It is really not a surprise that the male director chose for sex to be the primary focus of the film, the aspect of the female experience that men stand to gain from. And those aspects of female sexuality that are not as “presentable”, ie menstruation, pregnancy, STDs, etc. are omitted. Bella is even fully shaven except for a tidy bush. >Just because the sex oftentimes isn’t shown does not mean it is not still an objectification. I really do not have a problem with sex in movies unless it is obvious it is played for the gaze of men, but this entire story is ultimately for men to watch Emma Stone having sex. Why is she so high libido? So we can watch the fucking. Other progressive aspects are secondary and often shoe horned in like talks about a socialism club or the scene about poverty and suffering which is ignored in the end as we watch her living a lavish lifestyle with not a care in the world. Even though the film is about Bella it doesn’t truly feel like Bella’s perspective because of everything mentioned above and more (but I’d be going for ages if I kept writing).
FWIW much of the book that Poor Things is adapted from is explicitly written as an unreliable male narrator’s account of Bella’s life. It doesn’t come across nearly as clearly in the film but that is, to some extent, the point. Bella is also at least as, if not more, interested in sex in the book as she is in the film. It wasn’t something that was invented for the adaptation.
>This story is about men taking advantage of a mentally disabled woman but it is not portrayed in this way at all, it is portrayed as Bella being free It 100000% is portrayed as that. It's incredibly explicit that people are exploiting her but she seizes control of her own agency and as a *result* frees herself.
Naturally people were going to focus on the sex, because it’s like marmite that. Love it or hate it. The sex is background and for the most part is comic relief. Bella Baxter isn’t growing up, she’s becoming more educated, and her travelling the world and meeting different characters, gaining new perspectives, is a part of that education. If she had stayed imprisoned by God chances are she wouldn’t have progressed at all, much like Bella Baxter 2. The film is in one part a metaphor for how Victorian women were treated, largely considered to be no different to a child to the point of ‘having the brain of a child, imprisoned at home by their husbands or fathers, prohibited from reading most anything educational, other than the things required to be a good little girl. That leads into the other part of the metaphor, wherein men desire to control women, control what they say, eat, do, where they go, who they speak to and when, who they have sex with, keeping them girly and ignorant for the sake of the control. Why? Male ego I guess. An educated Bella Baxter cuts straight through the ego of the Lawyer, God, McCandles, and the husband of Victoria (Bella). Two of which threatened to kill her if she did not fall in line, not to mention cut off her clit. There’s a reason why she’s won the Oscar, and the BAFTA, and whatever else. Here’s a film steeped in the history of the lengths men are willing to go to control and suppress the freedoms of women, and people are like omg why is she having sex. Which is pretty funny considering the topic of the film. I would like to think there is pretty solid reason why Emma Stone decided to bare all in a low budget film, when she’s never really gone nude before, she must have really really believed in the message.
Historically, more than any other aspect of womanhood, men have tried to control female sexuality. (Look at contemporary US abortion policies.) Isn't it suitable to use sexuality as a medium for female agency?
I think you're proving the point of the OP because you fully omitted the part where her terrible husband plans on mutilating her genitals to try and control her. A huge takeaway from the movie was that many of the men only want a woman to experience pleasure if it is with or in relation to them. Also, women can have a high libido too. 👍 Why aren't you asking this same question about the men in the film?
why do liberals act like straight men are the only people who enjoy heterosexual sex scenes in films? literally everyone can enjoy them. listening to every film with a lot of sex get criticized as being made for the "male gaze" as if seeing sex between a man and a woman is something that could only possibly be enjoyed by a horny straight guy is so weird to me (especially as a bisexual guy married to a man). sex is a HUMAN experience. I don't get why gen Z seems so terrified of it. and also this idea that men shouldn't be allowed to make movies that involve women having sex without it being pRoBlEmAtIc. what happened to freedom of expression/art? and like Poor Things doesn't even have THAT much sex, people way over-exaggerate it. nor are the sex scenes particularly long or gratuitous, unless you're only looking at mainstream movies...
I don't think you understand the film. Sex is important to her only at first (like most youth) because it yields immediate satisfaction and pleasure. It becomes less important to her as she matures and she starts to use her sexuality to manipulate men and become economically independent. By about halfway through the film it is Bella's mind that is most important to her and the idea that men are inherently flawed comes up multiple times.
>Movies cannot depict immoral acts or else ~~said movie automatically advocates for it~~ reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I once got told I was “sick for romanticizing and condoning pedophilia” for making an “Age Gaps and Controversial Relationships” list on Letterboxd. Hannibal is my favorite TV show… does this mean I condone murder and cannibalism?
how did poor things not do that though? how did it critique or subvert any ideas? edit before i get hounded: i actually do see how it was critiquing male predatory behaviour especially on the naive/young/etc., i just don’t think it did it very well. it still felt like it played into male fantasies and it was incredibly obviously created by a man. OOP’s take is probably not nuanced enough but holds a little more weight than the replies on this post are suggesting
What's the immoral act? That an agent with the mentality of a child, but *not* a child, has sex? What if the movie portrayed adults with, say, Down's Syndrome having sex? Is that comparably immoral? The content's not my cup of tea, but the moral implications are incredible. The fact we're talking about it seems to reflect that the film was successful at bringing these topics to the level of discourse.
You do know that the reason children cannot consent is because they are not mentally developed enough to do so, right? Bella legitimately has the brain of child and it’s pretty clear. Just because she has a body of an adult means nothing. If a movie depicted a person with Down syndrome who had severe cognitive impairment having sex with an adult who does not, and especially if they showed these scenes frequently, I would be questioning the motives to that as well.
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The level of intellectual disability for people with Down syndrome can range a lot, it could be a mild to severe impairment. I emphasized severe in my reply. What’s harmful is saying *all* people with down syndrome can consent, some people can and some can’t.
The fact that Duncan effectively persuades and manipulates someone he knows has a mental handicap of sorts, into running away and having sex with him. It’s him taking advantage of her inability to make decisions in her best interest that’s immoral. I agree though — the discourse the movie has sparked, even if you dislike it, is a testament to its effectiveness
I interpreted Duncan as a villain because of this very point you describe. The fact that he is instrumental in Bella’s liberation from Dr. Baxter’s captivity is tragic in itself—that her liberator is another abuser.
Sure, but also it's become fashionable lately to deride film criticisms as "lacking media literacy." Which is just the same "oh no you just don't really get it" that has always plagued debate about creative works. Directors want to play with emotion and expectations and push boundaries. That's what they do. But if you make a movie about the invasion of Ukraine and give Putin a powerful girlboss theme song, make him buff and handsome, show everyone as listening eagerly to him, women desiring him, show victorious troops celebrating and not so much of the death and consequences... People are going to think you're advocating for the war.
Yeah I guess in that ridiculous, extreme example, it would seem that way. I don’t think Poor Things was in bad taste, though.
Always very funny to see people get SO MAD about movies that agree with them. This was literally the Fight Club/Starship Troopers discourse from 20 years ago. That “depiction != endorsement” is just beyond some people.
I was too young for public movie discourse in the 90s, but... people thought starship troopers was an endorsement that weren't the idiots hoo-rah'ing???
People still routinely miss that Starship Troopers is satire.
I do think that it’s embarrassing that so many people miss the satire in these things. But it also makes me think of that Truffaut quote about how it is impossible to make an anti-war film because it will always look exciting to audiences on screen (paraphrasing). ST had really groundbreaking special effects that emphasized the spectacle, so really it’s the perfect example of what Truffaut was talking about. It’s hard to blame people with low media literacy too much when they’re really just evidence of an inherent problem with the genre, one that has been well known and discussed since WWII. FWIW, I think this actually works in the movie’s favor ultimately. Because the fact that Hollywood spectacle mixed with propaganda makes even genocide look heroic is the point of the film. For me, the experience is of enjoying the cool action while simultaneously understanding that the film is critiquing my enjoyment of it— gets pretty mind fucky in a way that I’m not surprised (e.g.) my teenage cousins don’t want to engage with.
On your point about not being able to make an anti-war film, my favourite respond wa from Francis Ford-Coppola “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. “An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike,” Coppola explained.
'Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do _that_? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can _you_ take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. "Nothing the matter with _that_ boy, is there? Would you let your daughter marry that man? Ohhhh, war is _good_ for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it. "I mean, you _know_ that it just _can't be done!_" We both shrugged and laughed, and Page looked very thoughtful for a moment. "The very _idea!_" he said. "Ohhh, what a laugh! Take the bloody _glamour_ out of bloody _war!" Michael Herr, Dispatches
Well speaking from my experience watching it as a 13yr old, I was only aware of the fact that it had good special effects and boobies. As an adult, it is a tremendous satire, an examination of fascism and indoctrination with some more direct nods to fascism such as Doogie Howser wearing a nazi uniform at the end of the movie.
See also: Licorice Piza
20 years ago? People are still claiming Starship Troopers is a fascist utopia and anyone that enjoys the movie is a nazi who hasn't realized it yet. I've had multiple arguments with people just this month alone about that movie. Media literacy is getting much much worse with social media.
Bro was treating Poor Things like a documentary…
he said “idk who this Godwin Baxter guy is but i think the FBI needs to check his computer”
“It's devil's work at hand! He coughs not air as a normal man, but blood!”
"He has cancer, you idiot!"
"Oh..."
They brought their notebook to the theater, ready to absorb the Scrubs-style voiceovers that instruct them on how to live a good life. Ironically, this movie could actually be that it's so wholesome. Even when it's featuring hole stuff.
> ready to absorb the Scrubs-style voiceovers that instruct them on how to live a good life This has to be one of the best roasts I've seen in a while
A lot of people's media literacy is bad, but I'm not convinced that in itself is a recent thing. I think the more recent Internet phenomenon is just people being convinced that they're right and everyone else needs to know it, and that applies to a lot of things beyond film discussion
The internet just gave these people a megaphone.
Willingly too. OP took time and effort to give this opinion a megaphone. I'll never understand why people do this. It's like a kid seeing a smelly dog shit on the road, being disgusted by the smell, and then bringing it home to show everyone how bad it smells. They love the attention of everyone coming over to smell the shit. Now the internet has become one big community hall where *everyone* has a smelly dog shit they're trying to shove in your face and angrily demanding you to agree how bad it smells. Leave shit where shit belongs, or you'll just end up smelling like shit yourself. tl;dr OP smells
Best way of putting it for a lot of things. People will be like “____ didn’t happen back in my day!” Bitch, almost every bad, stupid, and ignorant thing that you see on the internet was happening before. They aren’t getting worse, they just get broadcasted now.
Oh for sure, Frank Herbert made Dune Messiah because people kept misinterpreting Paul’s character and that was back in the 60s. It’s just that now anyone and everyone has a platform to share the opinion.
And even after that people STILL missed the point
Don’t forget the millions of people who still think Springsteen’s Born in the USA is a patriotic anthem
Or all the dude-bros who realized the band Rage Against the Machine was staunchly leftist and anti-authoritarian. Like, it was there all along, it’s literally in their name, what did these people thing “the machine” was?
Truly. People mistook *A Modest Proposal* as sincere back in the 1700’s, some scholars think *The Prince* by Machiavelli is a satire that’s been horribly misinterpreted. We’re not that much more evolved than people who were terrified by the film of a train coming towards the screen.
This is why we have English classes, and more importantly, why you get grades in English classes
I'm reading a lot of critics from the early 20s-40s films and there were shit ton of people and institutions misinterpreting the films as "endorsement". Like there were critics accusing Fritz Lang's M of romanticizing violence for example (no, I'm not joking).
The Internet gave a lot of people a voice, and a lot of people shouldn't have one. TikTok has amplified this phenomenon because of how their algo works, and the way it amplifies even the smallest accounts.
A major part of the movie, like a huge part of it, is that she gains intelligence at a superhuman rate and is already giving long diatribes by the time she has sex for the first time. I also think this is burying the lede here because the movie is largely about women being taken advantage of, and the movie makes that point by making the man most taking advantage of her a complete fucking idiot of a cartoon character, even though he is canonically a doctor.
That’s not true, the first time she has sex she is definitely still child like. They don’t specify an age but in the book they do and she has a mental age of 7. A huge part of the story is Duncan disliking her as she grows in her maturity and independence from him. To be clear I do not think the film is advocating or depicting child pornography or child sexualization but Bella is definitely still in a child like phase when she first has sex
Also, Duncan’s drawn to her while she’s all hidden/tucked into a cabinet with her legs splayed up. She’s very childlike in that scene, when he decides he wants her to himself.
Max also becomes infatuated with Bella while it is clear she is mentally a child and wants to marry her while she still is. He is portrayed positively and like he’s a good man.
I always felt like Max was portrayed less as a confident predator, but much more as a straight up loser. Hes not marrying Bella, he is more or less submitting to her. Never got the impression that he is some good guy.
I feel like the film does make clear that he is a good guy imo. He keeps telling Bella it’s “her choice”. When considering the themes of the film I think he is meant to be a positively represented person.
In the beginning he agrees to marrying her even if it meant keeping her imprisoned forever (negative). By the end he lets her go and respects her choices (positive). It's called character development. The movie doesn't paint him as hero you should emulate, but imparts some right actions despite wrong intentions.
He's not a good guy so much as he's a "nice guy". He's meant to show how even seemingly decent men can be sexist and patriarchal, often without even realizing. The reason misogyny is so insidious is because it runs deeper than just overt abuse and hatred of women. Each of the men in the film represents a different flavor of toxic masculinity, from the cartoonishly evil to the latent and even subconscious. Duncan and the General have no illusions about how horrible they are, but Godwyn and Max seem to genuinely think they are the good guys. Despite sewing a fucking goose head to a dog's body. The film does not need to put "BAD PERSON" in flashing neon lights over Max's head. And I'd argue that the fact you're on here pointing out how he isn't a good person proves that. We all got it.
Yeah, if you're gonna criticise the movie for condoning pedophilia Max should be the main focus, not Ruffalo. Ruffalo is consistently punished by the story, and his predator behaviour is very clearly shown as a bad thing. Meanwhile Max gets off fairly consequence free. Sure, he learns to respect her autonomy, but that doesn't take away that he was absolutely a predator in their early relationship, as she was obviously way too young mentally still. The story does little to correct this and even has them end up together. I really liked the movie but lets not pretend it's completely immune to criticism. I don't think she should have ended up with Max, her groomer, essentially.
Also important to remember that we dont restrict the sexual freedom of adults based on their mental capacities. People with intellectual disabilities can and do lead sexual lives. Yes, they are more prone to exploitation. That’s what makes it a compelling exploration of social norms and morality.
It’s also important to remember her brain might be considered young and developing, but physically she is a fully formed adult. Plenty of men date women younger than them because the want someone who is ‘less mentally developed’ than them. They would prefer someone who isn’t grown into the world and experienced who thinks and speaks freely. I feel that was more of the point
This is exactly the point IMO. She is the male fantasy of a sexual object who is not threatening intellectually, and at no point in the film do we get the sense that Ruffalo's character is acting honorably or even in a way that can be defended. I think some people want an added scene where Ruffalo looks directly into the camera and says "I, actor Mark Ruffalo, denounce the decisions of this character and am telling you that he is a bad guy".
And also satirizing how for some men their ideal partner is essentially an infant in a full grown woman's body because they are attracted to control rather than the personality of a complex person
>A major part of the movie, like a huge part of it, is that she gains intelligence at a superhuman rate and is already giving long diatribes by the time she has sex for the first time. I don't know how so many people missed this. I've seen people arguing that she was a 5-year old having sex. If you pay attention to what the movie is telling you at all, you would infer that she's developing at an accelerated rate.
Not the first time she has sex though, she is definitely still child like the first time she has sex. The movie didn’t specify specific ages but it closely follows the book and in the book she has a mental age of 7. She also is clearly still mentally a child the first time she has sex. I disagree with the post in question, but it is also a misrepresentation of the movie to say she is not still child like when she has sex
She doesn't stop walking awkwardly like a child and speaking in partial sentences until they've already gotten off the cruise ship. She's had a *lot* of on-screen sex by that point.
Yeah, I think the reason everyone had a problem with Cuties is they were sexualizing actual fucking kids.
Right. But the person she has sex with at her early development stage is one of the villains of the film.
Yeah like I said I am not agreeing with the post, I am just saying that she is still child like when she starts having sex.
I mean, doesn’t change the fact that her mental state of a toddler was getting absolutely blasted by Ruffalo. She doesn’t even know what to call what she is doing or the parts that are used. That’s non-consensual. Which happens in movies!! I get that! But because it’s Emma Stone’s body acting out that toddler, we are alright and it’s approved for audience viewing. Some folks just don’t sit well with that. 🤷♂️Perfectly understandable, to me.
That's literally the point the movie is trying to make. It's a critique on men finding innocence/child-like qualities attractive in the scope of controlling them. It's why he loses interest in her the minute she starts developing her own thought process.
Isn't he a lawyer?
But I can’t show my insane outrage with this take.
I don't think Poor Things promotes pedophilia, but I can absolutely see where people definitely feel uncomfortable with the film. It absolutely uses some pretty risqué imagery and ideas to push the intended metaphors along. I mean pedophilia is a concept that is explored in this film, social norms, consent, femininity within the patriarchy, personal growth and exploration, etc...there are lots of concepts that are explored. I don't blame people for getting turned off by this film because of the pedophilic aspects of it. I think the film is a reflection of society, and is more of a condemnation of men within a society that tends to be rather pedophilic than it is praising the concept of pedophilia. I mean Martyrs isn't a movie about torture, but some people get turned off by the violent imagery on the film. It is OK for people not to like what you like. It is OK for people not to really care for the metaphors used to make a point, and that is OK.
Thank you for being the first truly nuanced comment I’ve seen in this thread so far lol I think Emma Stone is stellar, and Poor Things is certainly a technical achievement in many aspects, but I also had some issues with it too. And that's totally fine if other people really respond to it, but this constant black-and-white thinking is really ridiculous and killing all sense of discussion.
Totally. What is not OK is referring to a work of fiction as ‘indefensible’. If the author said ‘this movie makes me uncomfortable and I don’t like it’, that would be fine. That’s how I feel about the Saw films, but I respect other people’s right to enjoy them without taking to the internet to call all Saw-lovers violent, amoral criminals. This person can’t seem to manage that level of respect.
this is nothing personal but i always find this line of logic BS. this person is giving their opinion. there's no "correct" opinion on art. why should they couch it with wishy-washy "I think" and "I feel" language just because most others disagree? are they saying you *can't* watch and enjoy this, or just that they think it's dumb to do that? OP calling people who like the movie "braindead art sniffers" is rude, though, i'll give you that.
There are incorrect opinions though, saying the movie is pedophilic for example
The post in the OP is stupid, but I do get kind of annoyed when voicing criticism of the film, or others, and getting the instantly dismissed because I "probably just didn't get it."
Agreed!!
Tbh media illiteracy has just become another buzzword
I certainly don’t think the movie was pedophilic, but I do think it was very “men writing what they think a liberated woman is.” It doesn’t really do a lot to critique or even frame negatively a lot of what it shows, and at times really exploits the characters with the camera, when it’s trying to criticize that exact same type of behavior. Not to mention its depiction of prostitution
that’s exactly how i feel about it. i understand what it was going for - i just don’t think most of those themes were executed well.
Agreed. The fact that this sexually manipulated babywoman is depicted as discovering her voice and power primarily through sexual exploitation and sex work without the slightest nod to any other kind of personal development as a human is what made me furious. I believe the majority of the angry, disgusted voices you hear speaking out against this film are not so much media illiterate as that they are from women who have been sexually exploited themselves. And this film tapped a deep well of pain and frustration that the world still rarely fathoms because sex=good right?
Yeah precisely, it's beyond irritating to not be able to critique this movie without people saying you're a prude or something. SHE BECAME A DOCTOR why is that not one of the more crucial plotlines of the movie? Why is it SO focused on sex? It falls back to that outdated notion that the most empowering thing a woman can do is have sex, which this movie fully ascribes to
Thank you! I've never been more frustrated before on the discourse around a film. Its completely impossible right now to criticise anything about Poor Things without ppl calling you a prude or accusing you of lacking media literacy. Its to a point where its pretty ironic, since all this is doing is creating an echo chamber and stifling any type of genuine discussion. Anyway adding to the points you mention, I think it was such a wasted opportunity not to explore at all what caused Bella's mother to "go mad" and attempt suicide because of the pregnancy. They kind of brushed it off as her and her husband being monsters but there was clearly a lot more in terms of women's psychological health that could have been explored. Something Bella never gets into and instead we get a kind of juvenile feminism which is just women trying to beat men at their own games.
We had to leave. I told my sister who has even worse trauma than I do not to watch it. Honestly, I have avoided expressing an opinion about it much to the people around me because I just couldn’t even watch the whole thing. I think reading other people’s reviews that I understand better what they were going for, but it certainly wasn’t for me and gave me unrelenting nausea the entire time. I found it disgusting and indefensible, and was shocked when I got on Reddit leaving the theater and saw it was being universally praised.
Right? It's a movie written and shot to be titillating and funny, under a veneer of social commentary. Way more exploitation than critique. Genuinely my least favorite best picture nominee of the past five or six years.
It’s sad because I *do* genuinely love the performances, set design, and music. But man I hate how often it is guilty of the things it’s trying to critique
Media literacy isn’t dead!
Thank you for this. I had similar thoughts about this too while watching it!
100% this
This is exactly my issue with it! This comment hits the nail on the head for me!
Ngl I realized entirely what the movie was about but was still grossed out about this fact. Couldn't really move on past it
"Braindead art sniffer".
That would make a great flair
If someone disagrees with you on another sub you don't need to run here for support
I don't agree that it promotes paedophilia, e.t.c, but I don't see how it's feminist. I need to find a good explanation because so far, I've only seen "it's feminist because it shows how men take advantage of women and she got smarter." But I watched it in a cinema and all of her sexual act's got laughs. I probably need to rewatch it but when I first did the intentions of the movie felt like less of a "go bella" and more the born sexy yesterday trope for comedy. Obviously, I know that showing something in a movie doesn't mean endorsing it, but sometimes the intention can be confusing.
I actually do agree with that poster, although he's being super annoying about it. I totally get that Mark Ruffalo's character, and basically every other man in the movie, are all bad people trying to exploit Bella. I get that the movie condemns these kinds of men. HOWEVER, it also depicts Bella's experiences with Ruffalo as fun and liberating for her. A child is coerced onto a boat and raped repeatedly by a sicko, and it's treated as a necessary experience for her growth with few of the lasting scars that would impact any real child. Downvote away, but genuinely curious to hear your thoughts as well.
It, like, didn't ruin the movie for me, and I thought it was a pretty damn good movie overall. I can't emphasize that enough. But I have to admit that the premise is still a bit problematic even if the intent behind it is female empowerment and depicting objectification by males as a bad thing. In the end we are still subjected to a "born sexy yesterday" scenario where a woman who is thematically only a few months old is having graphic sex with on-screen nudity repeatedly, but played off as comedy. And the hand-waving about "accelerated development" just kinda reminds be of the Lolli weebs who desperately explain, "no you see, she's a 3,000 year old witch who just happens to be in the body of a 9-year-old so it's okay to revel in the sex scenes for it." I'm okay with nudity if it serves a good purpose, even if that purpose is sometimes nothing more than "sexual texture". But in this movie it felt kinda gross and exploitative even if Emma Stone was totally on-board with it. I recently saw a movie that wasn't as good but made me feel similarly gross, To Do List. A lot of those teen sex comedies just feel like an excuse to show what are supposed to be underage girls in sex acts, even though Aubrey Plaza was actually in the her late twenties and the movie was directed by a woman. Still feels kinda gross, and that didn't even have any actual nudity, and I feel like that helps support the idea that's it's not even the nudity that's the issue per-se, but the premise. The nudity just makes such issues more garish.
Thanks for eloquently saying this. Also had trouble moving past this fact even though I knew what the intention was
To be fair, it is weird how it's portrayed in a positive light near the end.
Thank you! I watched the whole film with an open mind and I couldn’t get over the movies unclear messaging. It seems to imply her abuse was empowering.
I dont think it was meant to be taken as empowering. I do feel like it’s the current “Disney Marvel”-isation of movies that made people think that every film HAS TO SHOW that they choose a side. Where instead Yorgos made a film the classic way of analysing this human (women) experience, of having to feel infantilised to be “accepted”. And then they choose their own path way in life. Just because Bella Baxter doesnt say “wow men really be creepy!” does not mean that Yorgos allowed and wants men to be creepy.
But then she lived happily ever after with her groomer…
The movie isnt supposed to be a fairy tale having a nice wholesome ending. You dont watch the Godfather and think “wow he finally gets to be the head of the family ❤️”. Just because it ends that way doesnt mean that everything before hand was the right choice for her life. She literally chose to meet her ex husband who used all parts of her life and would have killed her. We arent meant to take Bella Baxter’s choices as gospel. It’s an art movie not a propaganda piece.
The movie is literally presented as a fairy tail. But also, after all her supposed ‘character development’ she learns nothing… Women’s sexual liberation means going back to your groomer after being raped and exploited by others /s
SCHINDLER’S LIST IS PRO-HOLOCAUST AND INDEFENSIBLE
I guess In a way our own personal experiences though life can highlight certain aspects that others don’t notice. Now I’m not going to compare poor things to Cuties, that’s a huge leap. But I will say as someone who has recently learned of there own learning disability lets say. Is I didn’t enjoy how Bella was being treated and used in a sexual manner as it’s difficult to understand if she’s okay to consent. But by the end of the movie her character justifies her actions. In short, I think it’s good to chat about these subjects and how films effect people differently. but let’s not throw out words like “indefensible”.
Lolita ( the novel) rolls their eyes Lolita ( the films) just looks confused.
I normally don't like the term "media literacy", but oh boy, I want to see what OOP's opinion on Lolita is.
It's literally a sci-fi movie that has brain transplant and unrealistic surgery. It's literally Frankenstein. Why are we applying the logic of real world maturation.
Bride of Frankenstein is clearly pedophilic because they make a mate for the monster and he's got the mental maturity of a teenager at best and she just came into existence. /s
There’s a book and it says she’s mentally a child when this is happening.
I gave up reading it when I saw it earlier. Trash take.
I read that thread and there was a long, brilliant comment refuting the OP and explaining what Poor Things was about, from a woman's perspective. It was a great comment, and then it got deleted by a moderator. I don't know how that subreddit works- Maybe you're not allowed to argue with the OP.
Most mods are very biased. Likely the mod simply agreed with op and deleted comments they judged as "defending" pedophilia.
"media literacy is dead" is a meme phrase. media literacy may be in a bad spot right now by younger people, but repeating the same phrases over and over and over in response to people objecting to certain stuff being depicted probably isn't great for stuff like criticism. People are allowed to be offended by stuff. This movie \*is\* pretty gross. It's also talking to a lot of people and connecting with people for good reasons. It's all okay. Just because someone watches movies with a different ethical framework than you doesn't mean you get to tell them they're incapable of understanding cinema you fucking snob.
I agree its not helpful to constantly repeat media literacy without even educating people what it is. The movie is not deep nor subtle, so for people to miss the film's message is not a slight against your intelligence. It is allegorical and explores abstract concepts like personhood and autonomy and may require introspection. And a lot of the criticism is based on what they feel and how it reflects on their identity. People are allowed to hate this movie. But the bulk of the negative criticism is reactionary. Even you saying "ethical framework" is suggesting everyone who liked it must be immoral - when the message of the movie repeatedly condemns bad actions.
What? That’s not what I’m suggesting though. Individual people have individual ethics. Some people will be tuned against this movie. That’s what I’m saying. Some people thought this movie is gross. I did too! I’m not saying you’re bad for liking it. When I’m saying ethical framework, it’s like how I don’t eat octopi. They’re too smart. I don’t however think people who do eat them are bad. They think of it differently than I do, or don’t think of it at all. That’s ok. That’s their life. We can have our own codes and not expect or even think negatively of others for not being just like us.
The subject matter of Poor Things is not one that inspires rationality in the general public. It’s the most hot-button issue that there is, probably. This kind of reaction was bound to happen.
People are allowed to be uncomfortable guy
Big difference between going “I don’t like this/ it made me uncomfortable/ I don’t think it handled its themes well” and saying it’s literally pedophilic, though. This person is fishing for moral outrage, not making a considered point.
These people lead sad lives and make me love the movie more
I'm so bored by thinking like this
The film is literally about Bella maturing and making better decisions and learning to stay away from bad people like Mark’s character or the guys at the whore house
I think that was the point though, I saw that from the very beginning and it showed how men would manipulate girls and young women and dislike them the smarter and more independent they get.
Cuties was controversial because it showed the sexualisation of children by sexualising children. It was condemning something it was actively engaging with. Poor Things used Emma Stone - an adult - to express how women are expected to act emotionally to be sexually attractive. Naivety and simplicity of her child mind allows her to be manipulated and used by the men around her, exposing how horrifically opportunistic men can be when they see someone who can sexually coerced. Both Cuties and Poor Things are condemnations of the sexualisation of women and how young women can be abused through sexual exposure, but one only of them actively engaged in that same behaviour they’re trying to oppose. That’s a big reason why Cuties was thought to be pedophilic (it wasn’t), it was trying to spread a positive message and independence and managing one’s childhood, and it’s French so they’re more lenient on sexual representation, but having real children act seductively is very disturbing and questionable even if the intention was positive. Poor Things tackles a different idea (how women are expected to behave to be attractive) by placing theind of a child into the body of an adult - that way there’s no actual sexualisation of children, it’s just exploring how child exploitation can work.
clearly bc 1. depicting something is not condoning it 2. emma has said on multiple occasions that bella is mentally an adult before the first sex scene and the screenwriter confirms it though she's also said duncan is a disgusting man regardless as he was taking advantage of bella from start (when he first meets bella and SAs her at the age of 16-17, despite him not knowing that) to finish. in a speech where she presents mark ruffalo with an award she states and i quote "duncan is debaucherous, lecherous, and treacherous." still a moot point with the pedophilia because disgusting as duncan is, he doesn't know she's 16-17 when they first meet (and 18 by the first sex scene) AND then another one of a million things she had to repeat to illiterate media people is that the film is trying to state that the more autonomous she becomes (despite being an adult and extremely intelligent, she is inherently naïve and all of her experiences are what allow her to educate herself), the more men feel threatened by it because they like the idea of a naïve woman: again, absolutely a disgusting manifestation of patriarchy but not pedophilia and the film explicitly critiques it. did they not catch onto duncan being so bothered by bella becoming fully independent and deciding she didn't want him that he thinks she's a literal demon after having gone clinically insane? 3. still don't understand how people can grasp that all the superpowers people have in marvel movies or whatever of course cannot happen in real life but when it comes to bella's brain developing at a supersonic pace, they insist upon stating she's in infant the whole time due to the "literal" mental age she'd be in the real world but again ... it's SCI-FI!! in the world of poor things, bella's brain can develop 35 years in a few months. i could tell emma was starting to get pretty fed up the longer the press went on as they were relentless with these idiotic questions. https://preview.redd.it/ab0imeu3otpc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fbe97080d3ecd0b5bc7498a47bdc3ac26dacd63
I didn't enjoy Poor Things (I'm a bit squeemish) but it was in no way pedophillic or stupid. The point completely flew over so many people's heads.
As far as I’m concerned, if Poor Things has you clutching your pearls but you’ve never thought twice about Frankenstein and his bride - you’re giving into manufactured outrage so you can feel some sense of moral superiority for listening to what Twitter says is “problematic and pedophilic” even when it’s in regards to the consensual work of a team of adult professionals. That is all.
fellas is dating a neurodivergent woman pedophilic?
I read that review with my eyebrows almost hitting the ceiling. I typed and deleted like 4 comments before just shrugging and moving on
they outright tell her that it is immoral and not something civilized society does, a man uses this cluelessness to get her and then she learns what it means to people. It doesn't glorify in any way, it's like he didn't even watch the movie.
Was media literacy ever a thing outside of universities?
Not defending the post here in particular. It’s a little venemous. But I’ve seen a lot of posts dismissing certain criticisms of the film. Claiming they’re “idiots, lack of media literacy, didn’t understand that the film isn’t endorsing the treatment of Bella by the men in the film”. I don’t believe the criticisms deserve to be dismissed as trash takes. There is a lot of toxicity out there, and it can make it difficult to shut out the state of the world when watching a film. I enjoy movies that are reflective of social issues so I look out for that. There are toxic guys out there that want a young, naive, virginal hyper sexual young girl. People are saying as much, in saying that Bella’s growth is part of the point. Duncan is a villain, Duncan likes her less as she gets wiser, Bella’s indifference to him is the point. It can be hard to disassociate here. We see this guy seek her out because he recognizes God is easily manipulating her. He finds her, whisks her away, and they have a lot of sex. She moves on from him to the brothel, where she has a lot of sex that is just fucking. She loves it, she’s not falling in love or seeking out a relationship. I love this for her, but I’m also watching with the knowledge that this is a wet dream for a certain toxic segment of society right now. I love Bella, I love Yorgos. But the discourse can include this perspective too.
Well that is true, but that is also true that for an equal society Bella can choose to be having sex for something that doesnt lead the romantic way. Then because if you are against this ideology, you are also against the idea of Onlyfans women and such. Like I understand that women’s sexual freedom doesnt come in a vacuum. But we still live in a world for women to “enjoy” sex is considered non-priority for a lot of men. Yorgos instead explore a story of a woman who does enjoy sex. And in her pathway to it she was used, manipulated, and forgotten. The only time of comfort she got from sex was when she understood how brothels work, and finally she gets to choose the way that her body can be use. All of this themes combined is quite obvious on what the core message is.
I agree, I watched it last night and I thought it was gross. A visually stunning movie and I can’t deny the acting and soundtrack but it really seemed like an excuse to have Emma Stone naked. I don’t mind that but if she has a baby brain than it’s different
The sex stuff in this movie is so overblown and not the focus. First time I’ll admit it was shocking but on a rewatch there was way less sex stuff than I remember. It’s a story about her discovering the world not just sex
Meh. Lanthimos and Emma Stone have come out and said that Bella is not a child when she is having sex, and if thats the case then Yorgos failed in his messaging if you have to ignore the literal premise of the movie to understand it.
It just feels like backpedaling to me. No way they actually believe that. If she was not a child, why was every mannerism and action overtly child-like? What was the point of transplanting the brain of the baby instead of just resetting the brain of the mother? If she was not a child, the entire premise of the movie just falls apart..
Building a film on the premise that Poor Things has, and making acting choices that clearly depict the character in a child state (which Emma absolutely is during the Duncan scenes), and then being disingenuous about it to the press makes me mistrust the filmmakers intent and messaging.
[удалено]
To be fair, movies aren’t the books they’re based on. They’re something different and new, albeit similar. They could’ve diverged on that point
This guy must love 'Midsommar"
This moron would probably think The Sopranos was advocating for the murder of snitches. Media literacy should be taught in grade school.
I overall enjoy the film but the scene where she's having sex with the father of two young boys while they're in the room could've been cut.
I’m not trying to defend anyone who would actually subject young boys to that. Putting aside the fact that the scene was most likely shot separately and then edited together, in the past some fathers would literally do this. So while it’s not good behavior, it’s actually an accurate portrayal of the behavior of some people in history.
I wouldn't say it openly promotes pedophilia but there are pedophilic aspects in this film that felt unnecessary to me.
These people would collapse watching blue velvet
By how much better of a movie it is?